


Lifeless Logic (Why So Serious?)

by TheDixcesters



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternative Ending: S03 E15, Blood and Gore, Crack, Fluff, Happy Ending, Incest, Kinda, M/M, No Sexual Content, Pseudo-Cannibalism (Zombies), Zombies, but fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDixcesters/pseuds/TheDixcesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 15, Season 3: How It should Have Ended</p><p>"Let’s stagger when we walk<br/>That’s our way of love</p><p>Why so serious?<br/>Romeo and Juliet<br/>It’s not a sad love story<br/>Everything will be alright [...]"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifeless Logic (Why So Serious?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cannibalbat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibalbat/gifts).



> My ridiculously cracky head-canons for Zombies, written at 3am. :)
> 
> For my lovely Nana.  
> I hope this will be able to dry a tear or two ♥

_Merle, oh god please no!_

A shadow in the corner of his eye.

Two hands on his neck.

A searing pain cutting through his throat.

Darkness.

 

_(“Whaaat th' heeell...??”)_

The body of the man laying on the ground, chest and right cheek in the dirt, began to stir.

_(“Whaaat th' fck happnd...?!”)_

Fingers twitching, fingertips moving slowly, shakily over the ground, touching, feeling, scraping and clawing weakly at a clumb of grass.

He felt nothing.

Daryl's skin was numb. A tingling, prickling kind of numbness. His whole body felt like white noise. Like every single limb had fallen asleep. Like he had been drugged and he was just waking up from a narcosis. The only thing he could feel through the fog of numbness was a distant and dull pain deep inside of his bones.

Daryl tried to open his eyes. The effort it took to lift his eyelids, even just a milimeter, had him cross-eyed. His lids were crusted in salt, dried, almost glued together and feeling like they were weighing a ton.

He tried lifting his arms to his face in order to rub his eyes, but the limbs weren't moving, they remained motionless on the ground, spread out to his sides.

Daryl huffed through his nose in irritation as he begang to wiggle his body from side to side in an attempt to get his arms moving.

Then! His muscles and bones finally followed his intentions. Daryl could sense the way his arms were practically crawling through the dirt towards his head. After what felt like hours, the fingers of his left hand made contact with his left eye, the one not facing the ground.

He rubbed the fingertips over his closed eyelids in a circular motion, easing the pressure on his eyeball and scraping off the dried salt that made his lids stick together. 

A long-drawn-out groan from the exertion and concentration it took to perform such a simple task escaped his throat. Daryl barely noticed the way his tounge was sticking to the roof of his mouth which was completely dried out, closed behind numb lips.

He had almost entirely lost control over his coordination, Daryl realized absently.

It was like every cell nerve and every synapse in his body was working in slow motion, like it took hours for his limbs to follow his brains instructions.

He had never felt so drunk before in his entire life.

Daryl's hand, or brain or whatever part of him, had apparently decided that his left eye was good to go, because he could hear the muffled 'womp' of his arm falling limply to the floor, even though it sounded to him like his ear canal was stuffed full with wool cotton.

Carefully, he cracked his left eye open, milimeter for milimeter, blinkin rapidly. Well, as rapidly as his sluggish body allowed him to.

It was hard to take in his surroundings yet. Everything was blurry, all the colours and contours mixing into one watery white-greenish mass, but with every time his eye closed and opened again, everything around him became clearer. 

In front of his eyes, Daryl could see blades of grass coming out of the earth. Seemingly, he was lying on some kind of small, patchy meadow, surrounded by dried bushes.

More than that, Daryl wasn't able to see from his inconvinient point of view.

Having become a little accustomed to his bodies lagging movements, he could now move with less effort than before, making it possible for Daryl to slowly lift his head up and turn his face forward.

 _“Uuh?”_ , he exhaled in confusion as he was able to make out shadowy heaps of clothing lying on the ground around him. Daryl squinted his eyes dazedly, focusing his view on the one next to him.

The face of a human corpse covered in blood, chunks of flesh torn out of its body, stared back at him through wide and hollowed eyes.

The all-overwhelming sharp smell of death burned its way through Daryl's nostrils, sliding down his throat like bittersweet battery acid, pooling in his lungs, stabbing through his flesh, poisoning his blood.

Daryl lifted his right arm, stretching it out, reaching for the lifeless body.

He dipped his fingers in the thick puddle of blood on the dead man's chest and brough them to his mouth. The strong metallic smell that invaded his nose caused his tounge to loosen from the roof of his mouth. It darted out from between his cracked lips, the tip of his tounge greedily licking up the blood that covered his digits.

 _“Urgh!”_ It tasted horrible. Cold, lifeless, rotten. Daryl scrunched up his face in disgust. What the hell did he need dead flesh for? He was no goddam scavenger! The body had to be older than he had first excpected. Well, time to move on. Daryl was getting hungry and he needed food, fast.

As he staggered to his feet, swaying a little from side to side and groaning throatily, he caught the scent of fresh, hot human meat in his nose. 

_“Gnaaargh.”_  
(“Wheeeree, wheeeeree 's it...?”)

The clear smell piecerd through his foggy brain, driving him forward with every stumbling step.

Daryl passed another three corpses on his way, the same unappealing odor of rotting flesh hanging over them as over the first one, so he didn't do much as spare them a glance before moving on, continuing his search for edible food.

When he had finally reached the corpse that was seemingly emitting the scent of still hot blood, Daryl was confused to see another man already feasting on the body.

 _“Aurgh.”_  
(“Mine.”), he stated matter-of-fact.

The man lifted his head slowly, looking up at Daryl. A piece of freshly ripped-out flesh was hanging loosely from inbetween his teeth, his mouth was covered in blood and guts from eating all of Daryl's freaking food.

 _“Naurgh?”_  
(“Yours?”), the man asked, grunting dryly.

In a long forgotten part of Daryl's brain, the desire to defensively cross his arms bubbled up at the hard stare he was receiving from his competitor.

But Daryl didn't realy feel like caving in right now. He needed to eat, like right now, and this here was the best smelling corpse around. He decided to let his sassy side hang out.

 _“Aurgh nuuurh.”_  
(“Well, yeah. Why you fucking asking?”)

Far from being impressed, the asshole just uttered a gurgling chuckle and continued eating, biting into the dead body and tearing an especially huge piece of flesh out, chewing it appreciatively while smiling at Daryl full off smugness. That fucking-!

Daryl growled angrily, letting himself fall to his knees on the other side of the corpse. He was losing his patience fast, and sass didn't seem to work on this one. Daryl had to try it with diplomacy.

 _“Shnaaargh whaaagh ngh!”_  
(“Can't we just share, please? The hunger is killing me!”)

See? Daryl had tried everything he could to come off as friendly aspossible, but oh no!  
Mister I-ain't-sharin'-nothin'-with-nobody just completely ignored him this time, lifting his knife-hand to clumsily and elaborately cut out yet another chunck of meat.

How much did this guy actually eat? This was getting ridicul- wait. Knife hand?  
Something from the back of Daryl's clouded mind started to surface. Some kind of... memory?

Had there been something, had he done something before he had woken up here?

Daryl stared at the man in front of him, taking in every little deatail.

Grey, short hair, black shirt, white wife-beater, beige pants. He was older and slightly bigger than Daryl. His right arm ended in some kind of metallic tube, a sharp knife attched to it. Three fingers of his other hand were missing (goddamn, what was ist with this guy and his hands?) and his chest and stomach were pierced by many lead shot pellets.

This man, this flesh-eating-fuck... where did Daryl know-

 _“Hschhhhaaaaarrrsch”_  
(“What the fuck you lookin' at, boy?!”), the other hissed aggressively.

 _“Maaargh?!”_  
(“Merle?!”), Daryl wheezed in sudden realization, his eyes widening.

 _“Guaaaaargh Daarrlgh! Waaah!”_  
(“It's me! Daryl! Your Brother!”), he roared enthusiastically, waggling and waving his arms in front of the older man's face.

Finally, something like recognition seemed to dawn upon Merle. He interrupted his attempt to cut out more meat out of the dead body and let his knife-hand sink.

 _“Daarrlgh!?”_  
(“Daryl!?”)

Daryl nodded, smiling happily.

Wait. 'Smiling'? 'Happyily'?

More and more came rushing back to Daryl. Merle calling out his name had been like an axe, slamming and cutting into the dyke that had held everything back, letting through the wave that flooded his brain with emotions and memories, colours and sounds.

 _“Fraagh braah waaah!”_  
(“Fuck, baby brother!”), Merle brawled, bending over the corpse between them, throwing his arms around Daryl's neck and pulling him to his chest, hugging him very akwardly and uncoordinated, getting more blood and flesh over his little brother's clothes.

It was the best moment in Daryl's (after-)life.

He didn't even feel the knife of Merle's arm prothesis digging into his upper arm.

Unfortunately, Merle pulled back shortly after about ten minutes.

 _“Braah Waaah, hargh haaww schrrag?”_  
(“Baby brother, why are you fucking dead?”), Merle wanted to know.

Daryl shrugged at that, as he had been asking himself the same thing.

 _“Argh Dargh Kargh... Whaaaaagh dargh laaagh?”_  
(“I don't know... what does it look like?”)

Merle mustered him amused, a smile playing over his blood-caked lips.

 _“Caarth Taaaaart.”_  
(“Got your fucking throat cut, I suppose.”), and he waved the stump of his hand and the two fingers left in the direction of Daryl's throat.

Instinctively, Daryl lifted one of his hands up to touch the flesh there. Merle was right. His skin was crusted in dried blood and the gash that graced his skin was deep enough to practically push his fingers in. He grimaced in annoyance at himself. How could he have let that happen to him? He was freaking Daryl Dixon! But then, Merle was Merle so that was that. Sometimes you just couldn't win, Daryl supposed. 

_“Gard daaargh.”_  
(“Goddamn.”)

but Merle didn't seem to take Daryl's death as lightly as Daryl himself. He raised his right arm before stabbing the now half-eaten body in the stomach and letting out a deep growl.

 _“Gart yaarr whaaar baaaarghh wheeeaar maargh, caaargaawrs. Daaaar.”_  
(“Got you from behind when you were coming to look for me, those damn cowards. At least the most of them are fucking dead.”)

Daryl let out a sympathizing groan.

 _“Nargh. Garaaagh. Arrr waaaar guuuar.”_  
(“Nah, it's good now. At least we are together now.”)

He mustered Merle's bullet wounds again.

 _“Yaaar laaaurgh herr? Waaar herr?”_  
(“You just had to loose another hand, did you? What happened?”)

Merle's eyes turned to slits.

 _“GGAAAAARGGGHH!”_  
(“Governor!”)

 _“Daaaar Kaaagh?”_  
(“Did you kill him?”)

 _“Nargh!!”_  
(“No!!”)

“Waaargh tar baaaargh.”  
 _(“Well, too bad.”)_

 _“Barrrr baar aaar.”_  
(“I did beat his ass up pretty bad, though.”), Merle smiled wickedly.

Daryl gurgled of laughter, fondly looking at his big brother, who threw him a piece of flesh over with his teeth. 

It landed on the ground, Daryl's reflexes weren't as good as they had been in his living days, and he picked it up, happily biting into the meat. _Aaaaah, yeees._

 _“Waargh haarh caar shh.”_  
(“We need to hurry before it gets too cold to eat.”), Merle reminded him, nudging at the corpse, smiling at Daryl, and Daryl, with a mouth full of delicious food, smiled right back.

And they didn't talk about they governor, and that he was still alive, and what the group at the prison would be doing right now, if they were missing them or not, if they were still fighting, living, dying, laughing. No, they just walked around, beside ecahother, sharing food and sharing little touches to make them feel once in a while.

Because you know, what did it all matter if you were dead and you had your brother by your side until the end of the world's end?

Right.

 

And they “lived” happily ever after!

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Making one major character death better by adding another major character death! - Shippier-logic <3


End file.
